The collapse of Zaïre: implosion,
revolution or external sabotage?

Abstract

The collapse of Mobutu's Zaïre in 1996/97 was the
result of an unprecedented
correspondence of domestic, regional and international interests.
The Zaïrean state was established and sustained during the Cold War
with
Western support as a bulwark against communism and source of raw materials.
It maintained itself after the Cold War by playing on external fears of
state
collapse and by supporting French regional interests. By 1996, with the
failure of French credibility and US refusal to intervene, it had no reliable
external protector. Internal support was non-existent, and an opposition
alliance was constructed under Kabila's leadership. Regional states,
notably Rwanda and Angola, intervened to protect their own security.
Though successful, this regional alliance itself proved to be unstable,
leading
to a recurrence of war in 1998.

Footnotes

1 An earlier version of this article was originally presented
as a paper
on the panel: ‘The State and Regional
Security: rogue states, collapsed states, emerging regional powers’,
at
the MacArthur Foundation
conference on ‘Regional Security in a Global Context’,
organised by the Department of War
Studies, King's College London, April 1997. My thanks again to the
MacArthur Foundation and
the Department of War Studies for the opportunity to present new material
in a supportive
environment.